So, Ben Affleck’s Batman kills in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice… quite a lot. He doesn’t wantonly set out to murder anyone or anything, but he certainly doesn’t seem to care if the criminals he’s facing happen to expire while he’s in the process of taking them down.
This goes against most – but crucially, not all – comic book interpretations of the Caped Crusader, and even though the movie versions of the character have taken life in the past, fans were left a bit shell-shocked by the brutality they witnessed from Bats in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel follow-up.
During an interview with Hey U Guys, the director was quizzed about his decision to make Batman a killer, and here’s what he had to say:
I tried to do it by proxy. Shoot the car they’re in, the car blows up or the grenade would go off in the guy’s hand, or when he shoots the tank and the guy pretty much lights the tank [himself]. I perceive it as him not killing directly, but if the bad guy’s are associated with a thing that happens to blow up, he would say that that’s not really my problem.
A little more like manslaughter than murder, although I would say that in the Frank Miller comic book that I reference, he kills all the time. There’s a scene from the graphic novel where he busts through a wall, takes the guy’s machine gun…I took that little vignette from a scene in The Dark Knight Returns, and at the end of that, he shoots the guy right between the eyes with the machine gun. One shot. Of course, I went to the gas tank, and all of the guys I work with were like, ‘You’ve gotta shoot him in the head’ because they’re all comic book dorks, and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be the guy that does that!’
He’s not wrong – but I can still see some purists taking issue with his explanation.
How do you guys feel though about such a violent, murderous Dark Knight in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice? Drop a comment below and let us know, and be sure to check out our review of the movie right here.
